Crime Zero (47 page)

"Do it now," she snarled, pushing her gun firmly into Bibb's side, not giving her time to think.

With steady fingers Bibb keyed in the code on the keypad by the door, then stood still while the laser scanned her retina. As the door slid open, Naylor checked her watch. People would start to wake in the next hour or so. She would have to hurry if she wanted to plant the explosive and escape before detonating it. Hefting the tote bag in her left hand, she felt the reassuring weight of the device inside. It was small and simple but would be enough to rupture one of the reinforced glass walls. TITANIA should then go into Close Down mode, sealing the entire Hot Zone with airtight thermo-resistant sutured panels, containing the Level 4 and Level 5 labs, as well as the hospital and mortuary. Then, unless an override code was keyed in from outside, TITANIA would release a shower of virus-killing bleaches and chemicals into the contained area, followed by an ultraviolet light show and finally a firestorm of three thousand degrees to destroy any living organism in the Hot Zone. No human, plague, or vaccine would survive.

When the door to the Womb fully opened, Naylor pushed Bibb through and followed her in. The first thing she noticed was the recently installed Secure Data Unit. She had used one often enough in the bureau. It was only ever used to store data that were too sensitive or valuable to risk being lost or illegally accessed. Copies were rarely made of files in an SDU. It could only mean that whatever progress Kathy Kerr had made on a vaccine was in that box. It was isolated here.

"Now," she said, dropping her bag on the floor and pressing her gun into Bibb's visor, "tell me how much progress you've made. And tell me where I can find Kathy Kerr?"

Then she saw the note by the Genescope. It was from Kathy Kerr. It answered all her questions.

Luke Decker woke with a start. At first he didn't know where he was, the glass was so close to his face. And the rushing noise was so loud in his ears. Then he realized he was in a biohazard suit and had fallen asleep in the chair next to Kathy's bubble.

He turned to the digital clock on the chrome instruments by the bed: 4:47. Quickly he turned to Kathy. She was lying in a ball, her dark hair splayed over the pillow, her mouth half open. He tried to see the bracelet around her wrist, but it was obscured under the covers.

"Kathy," he said, "wake up!"

Her eyes opened, and she looked panicked for a second.

"How are you feeling? How's the bracelet?"

Her eyes widened, suddenly fully awake. She whipped her hand out from under the covers, exposing her bracelet. Both LCD windows, the blood and genome indicators, were green.

"What does it mean?" he asked, suddenly nervous.

Kathy looked at him, a look of disbelief on her face; then she smiled. "I'm in the clear. I don't know if Reprieve actually works, but it's safe. Green means that the odds of its causing any harm are so low as to be statistically insignificant."

"In that case," he said, picking up her discarded space suit and passing it to her, "let's get the hell out of here."

Chapter 48.

ViroVector Solutions, Palo Alto.

4:58 A.M.

Kathy Kerr could barely contain a sense of impending triumph as she and Luke Decker traveled in the elevator to the lab complex above. Both wore white hospital biohazard suits. Minutes ago they had rushed to the main ward in the slammer and checked the male test subjects. All were asleep, but their gene readings were showing huge improvements.

Kathy was beginning to believe that they were actually going to prevent the biological cataclysm. She looked at Decker, thinking of how he had come to sit with her last night. She felt an overwhelming sense of partnership. Together they had uncovered Crime Zero and fought against all the odds to foil it. And now they were close, so close, to stopping it.

As the elevator doors opened, Decker stepped out and turned left toward the BioSafety Level 5 door of the Womb. Through the angled glass Kathy could make out part of the interior. The sight of the blue Chemturion space suit leaning over one of the work surfaces made her quicken her step. "Look, Sharon's up. Let's give her the good news. Then we'll alert Tom and the others."

She keyed in the code to the Womb and allowed her eye to be scanned. When the door hissed quietly open, she slipped in, Decker following close behind.

Kathy didn't understand the strange way Sharon Bibb was leaning against the Genescope at first. So she moved nearer. She saw the bullet hole through Sharon Bibb's helmet and realized she was dead at virtually the exact same time she saw the black FBI biohazard space suit. The figure was turned away from her, crouching over what looked like a square box of steel, before the glass-fronted refrigerator, which contained many of the world's most virulent and lethal viruses, including Ebola and Marburg.

Stunned, Kathy stood frozen to the ground as the black helmet turned toward her. And although Madeline Naylor's dark eyes looked surprised when she saw her, the onetime FBI director was smiling.

It took Luke Decker a few seconds to take in the situation. Nine yards ahead of him Madeline Naylor crouched over what looked like a small bomb. Four yards behind Naylor, in the no-man's-land between them, was her bag. And on it her gun.

Kathy stood to his right. The Secure Data Unit, which contained all the Reprieve vaccine data that now urgently needed to be dispatched, was on his left. But he didn't know the code. Only Kathy did.

He could tell Naylor had weighed up the situation too. She seemed torn between finishing priming the bomb and reaching for the gun.

Kathy looked straight at the SDU, obviously realizing it was vital to send out the data or all could be lost.

For a long breathless moment no one moved. Each just stared at the other.

Then Decker turned to Kathy, and as he dashed for the gun, he shouted at her, "Send the data. Now!"

Suddenly all three of them were moving as fast across the sheer white tiles as their clumsy suits allowed.

He collided with Naylor as they lunged for the gun, pushing the bag across the tiles and sending them both clattering to the floor.

Decker groaned as his bruised body hit the floor and his broken arm smashed against Naylor's helmet. Directly in front of him he could see Naylor staring at him from behind her faceplate with venomous hatred. To his right he could see the bomb. The black box had a digital display showing the number 9:01 in red digits, presumably a countdown in minutes.

Naylor was now looking beyond him at Kathy, who was standing over the Secure Data Unit, keying the send code into the keypad. Scrabbling to her feet, Naylor kicked his broken arm, and Decker heard a bone crack. For a second he could do nothing but writhe in the white heat of agony. Naylor grabbed at Kathy and pushed her away from the SDU before she could press the large red send button that would deliver the transfer files to the production sites around the world.

Gritting his teeth, Decker grabbed for the bomb with his good hand. But it was a sealed device with a one-way switch. He was no bomb expert, but even his basic explosives training told him that this was designed for ease of use and the utmost simplicity. Once the timer was set, the sealed device would go off at the designated time, and nothing would stop it. The only way to avoid the explosion was to get the hell out of the way.

Then he saw Madeline's Glock under the safe. It must have been propelled along the floor when they collided. He pushed his good arm under the safe and tried to reach for it, but his fingertips touched it only enough to push it farther away. He changed his angle and gained another inch, just enough to pull it out. Then he heard glass smashing behind him. And when he turned and aimed at Naylor, he realized it wasn't going to be that easy.

Madeline Naylor closed her hands around Kathy Kerr's helmet and felt the rage eat into her, twisting her entrails, tightening her chest.

Sharon Bibb wouldn't tell her much before she died, but Kathy Kerr's note had explained enough. Naylor had been delighted that Kathy Kerr was in the hospital suite because the bomb explosion would kill her. All the data in the SDU and the samples of the vaccine would be destroyed too. And when the bomb prompted TITANIA to close everything down and purge the hot core of the complex, all electronic and organic trace of the vaccine should be destroyed, along with Kathy Kerr. It was an ideal solution.

But then Decker and Kerr had entered the Womb.

Decker was injured, so pushing him away hadn't been difficult, but Kathy had almost keyed in the send codes to transmit the vaccine files to whoever was expecting them. It was vital that the files didn't get out, that everything be destroyed. So she had made a decision, leaped at Kathy, pushing her away from the SDU.

Kathy struggled hard, but Naylor smashed the back of Kathy's helmet through the glass door of one of the refrigerators, dazing her and sending rows upon rows of vials crashing to the ground, releasing every major virus from Ebola to Marburg to Hanta. Madeline held Kathy facedown in a headlock, her face as close to the virus-drenched floor as the thickness of the glass of her visor.

But now Decker had her gun.

"Put it down, Decker," she yelled. "Or I'll rip her helmet off. This place is so hot she'll die in minutes."

"We could all die in minutes," said Decker with irritating calm. He stood holding the gun aimed at her. "Six minutes now, according to your bomb. Kathy, are you OK?"

But Kathy, obviously concussed, said nothing. Her body felt heavy when Naylor lifted her as a shield in front of her.

Suddenly through the glass walls she saw three people in blue space suits rushing down the corridor, through the Level 4 laboratory area to the Womb. Naylor thought through the options, then realized she had no choice. She would die. But before she did, she would ensure this place was destroyed and Crime Zero protected. Pulling Kathy closer to her, she stretched for the lock by the door. There was a hissing noise as two dead bolts slid into place. Now the Womb could be opened only from the inside.

"Decker," she said, "if you make any move toward the SDU, I'll kill her."

Kathy's silence wasn't helping Decker at all. For a start he wasn't sure whether she had keyed in all the code into the SDU. And he didn't even know what the code was. He could only stare at the large red button, knowing that if he pressed it without the full code, nothing would happen. And if he moved toward it, Madeline would undoubtedly kill Kathy. Decker's only hope was that Kathy would come around before the bomb went off in five minutes.

Outside, he could see Allardyce and the Schlossberg twins pawing the glass, helplessly looking in. If only he could hear them, Allardyce could give him the code.

"I thought you were against violent crime, Naylor," he said, "yet you've already killed more people than most of the murderers I've hunted down. And if you get your way with Crime Zero, you'll be responsible for more murders than all men combined, living and dead. My whole gender won't have been as effective at killing as you were. Does that make sense? One woman--the head of the great law-enforcing FBI--murdering every adult member of the opposite sex simply because she's against murder?"

"How would you understand?" Naylor said through clenched teeth. "Your father raped and killed young girls. Of course you don't see the necessity of purging your own kind."

Kathy seemed to stir, and through the glass of her faceplate Decker could see her eyes trying to focus. If he pressed the red button, he might save almost two and a half billion men, but he would definitely kill Kathy. He had to wait for her to confirm the code. "Of course I see the need to hunt down and destroy the evil among us," he said to Naylor. "I've done it all my working life. But a violent criminal is anyone who has committed a violent crime, not simply a man. A violent criminal is someone like you."

Naylor was visibly rattled, making her loosen her grip on Kathy and focus on him.

He raised his voice now, almost shouting, continually glancing at Kathy as he spoke. "The real irony is that you are the violent scum you're so against. You should purge yourself rather than anyone else."

Naylor gave him a venomous smile. "It doesn't matter what you think now. In a few minutes this place and everything in it will be destroyed. Crime Zero will prevail. My only regret is that I will be unable to experience the benefits. But then that's a small price to pay to know that all your meddling has been in vain."

Suddenly Kathy spoke. "The code's in," she said. "Press the button."

For a second Decker looked at her, then at Naylor.

"If you make one move toward it, I'll kill her," Naylor said.

The deal had changed. Pressing the button would save the lives of millions, billions of men. It would also kill Kathy. Logically the choice was simple, but this had gone way beyond logic. In that instant he realized how much she meant to him and what he was about to lose. He also knew there was no choice.